The amount of data transferred between electronic devices has grown tremendously the last several years. Large amounts of audio, streaming video, text, and other types of data content are now regularly transferred among portable computing devices, tablet computers, desktop computers, laptops, all-in-one computers, wearable computing devices, cell phones, smart phones, media phones, storage devices, portable media players, navigation systems, monitors, power supplies, adapters, remote control devices, chargers, and other devices.
These data transfers may occur over various media. For example, the data transfers may be made wirelessly, over wire conductors, over fiber optic cables, or they may be made in other ways. Power may be transferred with the data, or power may be transferred separately. For example, power and data may be transferred from one electronic device to another, or power may be separately transferred from a battery, charging circuit, or power converter to an electronic device.
Power and data may be conveyed over cables that may include wire conductors, fiber optic cables, or some combination of these or other conductors. Cable assemblies may include a connector insert at each end of a cable, though other cable assemblies may be connected or tethered to an electronic device in a dedicated manner. The connector inserts may be inserted into receptacles in the communicating electronic devices.
The conveyed power and data may be arranged to be compliant with one of a number of various interfaces. Typically, an electronic device needs a separate connector receptacle to communicate with each of these various interfaces. This may cause an electronic device to have a number of connector receptacles, which can result in customer confusion, may increase device cost and complexity, and lend a non-optimal appearance to the electronic device. Product launch cycles may also be lengthened since design effort may be required for each different receptacle and circuitry related to them.
Thus, it would be desirable to reduce the number of connector receptacles that are needed on an electronic device. Also, since so much data is transferred between devices, it would also be desirable that the remaining connector receptacles be capable of high-speed data transmission.